the most important philosophers for Lincoln-Douglas debate

When it comes to Lincoln-Douglas debate, everyone knows you should know a little philosophy--okay, more than a little, a lot--but time is precious. How should you focus your energy and effort?

I've arranged groups of philosophers by their potential usefulness to you. The "basic study" group, for example, is composed of the philosophers you are most likely to hear cited in a round. (I almost wrote "encounter," but realized that the more literal-minded members of my audience might have found such language confusing instead of humorous.)

Warning: the following list is based on practicality, not any Platonic standard of LD-oughtness. Also, the list is provisional--a work in progress. I've almost certainly missed somebody important. Suggest names in the comments, and I'll add them.

Last, if you don't know it already, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a great place to meet--encounter--read about many of these philosophers. Check it out.

The Basics

Plato on justice, rights, and the ideal State (hint: not a democracy)
Aristotle on justice, rights, and democracy
Hobbes on the Social Contract, especially regarding sovereignty, punishment, and the State of Nature
Locke on the Social Contract (but understand his foundations in empirical knowledge and natural theology, which grounds rights)
Rousseau on the Social Contract
Kant on rights, duties, and his formulation of morality encompassing both, The Categorical Imperative
Mill on democracy, utility, free speech, and the Harm Principle
Marx on justice, equality, societal values, revolution, and more
Rawls on a new, pluralist approach to the Social Contract and "justice as fairness," including the Original Position / Veil of Ignorance, the First and Second principle of Justice, democracy, neo-Kantianism
Maslow on value, especially his Hierarchy of Needs

Advanced Study

de Beauvoir on ethics and gender
Berlin on ethics (especially pluralism) and politics
Dewey on moral and political pragmatism and democracy
Hayek on freedom
Hegel on Hegel
Hume on the Social Contract
Arendt on democracy and totalitarianism
Dworkin on morality and law
Dahl on democracy
Schumpeter on democracy
Kierkegaard on reason
Aquinas on Natural Law and Just War Theory
Popper on anti-Platonism
Sartre on freedom and ethics
Habermas on democracy and deliberation
Nozick (especially against Rawls) on rights, freedom, and the Social Contract
Foucault on rights and justice (especially concerning criminality and punishment)
Beccaria on criminal justice and punishment
Bentham on Utilitarianism
Rand on Objectivism, especially as it concerns morality and freedom
Added: Josh's List

Kritik Central

Adorno on critiquing the West
Baudrillard on... good luck.
Derrida on deconstruction
Gadamer on hermeneutics
Levinas on ethics and the Other
Nietzsche on anything
Rorty on pragmatism and democracy


[154th in a series]

today's umbrage links

Adam Kirsch describes how, in his Rawls-directed ire, Raymond Geuss is a modern-day Thrasymachus.

Jacob Weisberg takes several shots at libertarians. The cheapest:

The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school.

Emily Yoffe parses the evolutionary roots and social utility of umbrage.

The Transportation Security Administration is, apparently, bad beyond umbrage. Read the whole thing. Like the novel 1984, the last sentence is the saddest. [via Mark Frauenfelder]

value and criterion pairs for the felon voting resolution

Here are several value/criterion structures to consider for the November/December resolution, "In a democratic society, felons ought to retain the right to vote." Each value is chosen under the assumption that it could be defended as the core value of a democratic society.

I won't say which goes with either side; many, if not all, could apply to either Aff or Neg. That's determined largely by the arguments and evidence you assemble.

This is a first draft; as I go along, I'll add analysis to every offering.

Feel free to suggest your own--which I'll tack on at the bottom--or critique the various offerings, in the comments.

V: Human Rights
C: International Law
A democratic society, to be truly democratic, must uphold human rights. (You can figure out why.) Since the resolution does not specify a particular society, we can't be 100% certain which rights must be protected. Best, then, to look to the prevailing standards of international law--the rights that people across societies, cultures, and even times have agreed are essential. Is this criterion open to attack? Certainly. But it also presents a clear, highly defensible set of rights (and jurisprudence as evidence).

V: Freedom
C: Protecting Human Rights
Perhaps human rights themselves are only means to a greater end: freedom. Once you explain why freedom is the ultimate value of a democratic society, you can explain why prserving rights is essential to human freedom. Note that this structure works well for Aff or Neg; you have to provide the reasoning for either.

V: Justice (defined as "to each their due," or a similar concept)
C: Retribution

V: Justice
C: Another applicable criterion for punishing felons

V: Justice
C: Rawls' first principle of justice (or, more generally, the Rawlsian social contract)

V: Moral Pluralism
C: Tolerance

V: Societal Welfare
C: Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is quite possibly the closest allied moral framework with democracy. After all, if the goal is the greatest good for the greatest number, what better way, societally, to achieve this than through democratic means? If the ultimate aim of a democratic society is its own well-being, then utilitarianism offers a way to determine whether felons' suffrage adds to or detracts from overall happiness.
Strategy for Success: Be sure to show how Util leads to SW. Watch out for the "50.01% can kill 49.99%" response, an oversimplification of Util. Learn about the nuances and varieties of Utilitarianism.

V: Autonomy
C: Respecting Human Rights

V: Human Dignity
C: Respect for Autonomy

V: Justice
C: Equal protection of the laws

V: Societal Welfare
C: The rule of law

V: Human Rights
C: Locke's Social Contract

V: The General Will
C: Rousseau's Social Contract

V: Societal Welfare
C: Upholding Moral Standards
Morality is good because it holds society together. (There may be social contract implications lurking beneath the surface of this structure.) If the core value of a democratic society, then we are justified in punishing those who commit offenses against morality.
Strategy for Success: This criterion respects differences across societies, since the resolution doesn't specify any particular society. However, it also leaves one open to the attack that morality is difficult to define and agree upon, even with in a society.


V: Justice (defined in terms of morality)
C: The Categorical Imperative
According to Kant, moral actions are good in and of themselves. Furthermore, Kantian theory applies to all rational agents, which are the foundation of a democratic society. Felons are rational agents, and must adhere to the Categorical Imperative. Those who punish them are bound by moral obligation to punish them to the fullest.
Strategy for Success: Many people misunderstand Kant and the Categorical Imperative, so make sure you do the research first.

V: The Common Good
C: Deliberative Democracy
The resolution concerns the aim of a democratic society, and the balanced or opposed interests of innocents and criminals. If deliberative democracy is the moral means to the common good, and felons threaten the deliberative process when they are allowed suffrage, then we ought not allow felons the right to vote.
Strategy for Success: Requires quality research and a quality debater. Not for beginners.

I think that reader Anand's analysis here is better than my hastily conceived idea. (Scroll down through the comments to see the discussion.) Anand writes,

Jim, I think we agree that deliberative democracy isn't directly applicable.

But I was just thinking about it, and one could argue that since the resolution is discussing what felons ought to have in a democracy, it requires a picture of what a democracy ought to be.

Obviously a democracy can exist regardless of whether felon can vote. So the challenge is showing that enfranchising felons leads (or doesn't lead on the neg) to a more ideal democracy.

Therefore, if you can show that your conception of an ideal democracy is more ideal than your opponent's, and if your ideal demands felon suffrage, you should win.

I don't think that I'm necessarily using deliberative democracy, but my case will have a strong Rawlsian framework with additional analysis on punishment and ideal democracy from behind the veil.

V: Freedom
C: Libertarianism / Minimal State

Rawls and the rights of felons

Why might you use Rawls for the November/December resolution? Answer: Rawls is all over democracy. In fact, a Rawlsian conception of a "democratic society" could be the basis of an interesting case.

In "Political illiberalism: The paradox of disenfranchisement and the ambivalences of Rawlsian justice," found in the January 1997 Yale Law Journal, Jesse Furman, who aims to critique Rawls, shows the strengths and weaknesses of a Rawlsian approach to punishment as it relates to felon voting.

Furman describes Rawls's view of a democratic society:

Rawls's principal aim in Political Liberalism is to specify a "political conception of justice" given the "fact of reasonable pluralism": the fact that a democratic society is characterized "not simply by a pluralism of comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines but by a pluralism of incompatible yet reasonable comprehensive doctrines." The political conception is conceived as the focus of an "overlapping consensus" of these differing comprehensive doctrines.

From the clash of perspectives behind the veil of ignorance arises a complete framework for a liberal society.

[T]he first principle of justice as fairness is that each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of basic liberties. This principle is defined as prior to the second principle, meaning that greater social or economic advantages can neither justify nor compensate for a deviation from the institutions of equal liberty.... [T]he "worth of the political liberties to all citizens... must be approximately equal, or at least sufficiently equal, in the sense that everyone has a fair opportunity to hold public office and to influence the outcome of political decisions." Principal among all the basic liberties, therefore, are the political liberties; principal among the political liberties is the right to vote. As Rawls writes in A Theory of Justice: "[A]ll citizens are to have an equal right to take part in, and to determine the outcome of, the constitutional process that establishes the laws with which they are to comply."

Furman cites Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, who noted that the franchise "is the sacred and most important instrument of democracy." Furman, quoting Rawls, then explains the reason for the centrality of suffrage.

First, the political liberties are "essential... to make sure that the fair political process specified by the constitution is open to everyone on a basis of rough equality." Second, they are crucial "in order to establish just legislation." As a result, "it is not implausible that these liberties alone should receive the special guarantee of fair value. This guarantee is a natural focal point between merely formal liberty on the one side and some kind of wider guarantee for all basic liberties on the other." This argument is based principally on pragmatic concerns: Political liberties are crucial because they provide access to the process that determines the value of all the basic liberties.

Two Supreme Court cases that take a Rawlsian stance: Yick Wo v. Hopkins, and Wesberry v. Sanders, which held that

"No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined."

The work of the Affirmative running Rawls, then, is to show how denying felons the franchise undermines the value of the vote, by using "justice as fairness" as the value of a democratic society, and Rawls' first principle as a criterion.

There is a foundational critique of Rawls, though, for the Affirmative who's running something else and facing a Rawlsian neg (and a warning to both sides who run with Rawls). Consider the "original position," from which the putative members of a just society choose the rules. Reasoning from this plural starting point, Rawls aims to establish a democratic society that not only meets the approval of a vast majority of its members, but is warranted to the degree that criminality can be punished. To this end, Furman notes, Rawls argues that not only is a democratic society reasonable, but its principles are obviously reasonable to all, even to criminals. In other words, it is simply unreasonable for someone to consider the principles derived from the original position to be unjust.

Perversely enough, therefore, the dissonant individuals themselves are considered participants in their own treatment or punishment. Indeed, this insight forms the basis of a brief critique of social contract theory by the French philosopher Michel Foucault: "In effect the offense opposes an individual to the entire social body; in order to punish him, society has the right to oppose him in its entirety. It is an unequal struggle: on one side are all the forces, all the power, all the rights." The criminal in such circumstances faces a penalty that "seems to be without bounds," while because he is a part of the social body that is bound by the contract, he cannot object--he wills his own punishment....

Thus it seems that justice as fairness is voluntary and liberal only up to a point: only for those whose self-understandings would have them voluntarily comply with it in the first place, or whose self-understandings are easily adaptable to the mandatory self-understandings prescribed by justice as fairness. For all others, Rawls can only say: "Your nature is your misfortune."

Anyone considering the core values of a democratic society must include tolerance in that list; a democratic society that cannot handle friendly dissent, as Karl Popper noted, is ceding to its totalitarian impulses. Rawls seems to be edging close to a reasonable totalitarianism by majority rule.

What's the alternative, then? Furman describes a "duty to engage in dialogue" as the answer to Rawls' overreliance on reason. Democracy is messy, and a democratic society simply has to live with that fact.

Addendum
On the other hand, see here for a Rawlsian defense of punishment.

All Hail Rawls Addendum
I'm holding on to this thought for the next time a U.S.-centered resolution rolls around, and I need to warrant Rawls as my criterion-maker of choice:

Rawls's liberal political philosophy is the theory most closely aligned with the way we live and view ourselves in America today; his ideals reflect and inform those ideals that American institutions attempt to fulfill.

There may be other ways to put it, but this one has a certain grace. (Read the whole article to learn why Furman is convinced of Rawl's dominion over American political thought.)

Final Note
This post is a little disjointed and rushed, for the sake of getting out there so you could critique it with all due haste. So, have at it.

a brief introduction to Rawls

Anyone interested in the work of John Rawls--and I direct this mostly to high school debaters who have yet to memorize the Difference Principle--would be well-served by David Gordon's concise and thoughtful introduction to his work, including a biographical tidbit that may explain his reliance on moral luck as the foundation of his contractual thinking.

Rawls argues that people do not deserve to reap the rewards of [their] talents. Tiger Woods earns millions of dollars because he is superlatively good at golf. Yet his abilities do not stem from any special virtue on his part. He was just lucky that, by some combination of heredity and environment, he ended up with superior skills. He is lucky in another respect: market demand for golf enables his talent to achieve vast returns. Because market demand for checkers players is much less, the late Marion Tinsley, whose skill at checkers was comparable to that of Woods in golf, did not earn comparable returns on his talent.

One might object that luck is not the full story. However talented he may be, Woods had to practice countless hours from his early youth to get where he is today. Does he not deserve to benefit from his hard work? Rawls has an answer that I suspect readers will find surprising. He thinks that if you have the personality trait of working hard, this too is a matter of luck. Even though Woods practiced strenuously, he does not deserve to benefit from this trait.

As Thomas Pogge has noted in his recent biography John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice, Rawls was especially sensitive to issues of luck because of a sad occurrence in his own life. Two of his brothers died in childhood because they had contracted fatal illnesses from him. Pogge calls the loss of the brothers the “most important events in Jack’s childhood.” In 1928, the 7-year-old Rawls contracted diphtheria. His brother Bobby, younger by 20 months, visited him in his room and was fatally infected. The next winter, Rawls contracted pneumonia. Another younger brother, Tommy, caught the illness from him and died.

Gordon also explains the appropriation of Rawls' techniques and premises by libertarians he calls "Rawlsekians," fusing the work of Rawls and Hayek.

An interesting critique of Rawls may come from moral psychology, which has found that people have strange and sometimes contrary intuitions about moral dilemmas, reaching answers that aren't always amenable to classical conceptions of reason. Rawls's scheme depends on a set of unbiased thinkers behind a veil of ignorance, but perhaps innate biases and irrational quirks rule out any truly ideal foundation for a social contract.

limiting economic inequality ought to be a more important social goal than maximizing economic freedom

The NFL Lincoln-Douglas debate topic for the national tournament, 2008, has been released:

Resolved: Limiting economic inequality ought to be a more important social goal than maximizing economic freedom.

At last, a classic LD controversy, without the words "In the United States" to contextualize it to death. Lots of juicy words to analyze, and some pretty distinct positions staked out on either side, so it'll hopefully lead to good debate. Watch this space for links and analysis in the days and weeks to come. As always, your comments and questions will help drive my research and determine how much I'll blog about it.

5/2 To start thinking about it, read this brief essay on the philosophical disagreements--and moments of surprising harmony--between John Rawls and Robert Nozick. (If you didn't know, the resolution, in one reading, is a classic Rawls-v-Nozick struggle.)

5/4 I'm working on some thoughts, which I hope to post later this evening. In the meantime, examine the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's take on Distributive Justice. And done: three reasons society should limit economic inequality.

a Rawlsian approach to punishment

John Rawls, though setting out a liberal theory of justice, stopped short of justifying a particular view of punishment. Still, Sharon Dolovich is convinced that we can use the Rawlsian veil of ignorance to legitimize punishment in a liberal society. LDers contemplating the current hate crime resolution might take note of her article, "Legitimate Punishment in a Liberal Democracy," found in the Buffalo Criminal Law Review, available online [pdf].

Dolovich first warrants the use of deliberation in the "original position," in contrast to most punitive schemes, which operate in an ex post framework.* She writes,

[I]t is a basic assumption of the argument I develop--and indeed, of liberal democracy itself--that all members of society are moral equals, entitled to due consideration and respect as fellow human beings and fellow citizens. From this assumption, it does not follow that all citizens are entitled to equal treatment. To the contrary, by their actions, individuals may forfeit certain goods that other citizens enjoy. But on the theory of liberalism I adopt here, forfeiture in this sense does not negate an individual’s moral status: he or she is still a subject of justice, entitled to consideration as such.

This means that any legitimate theory of punishment necessitates the prior deliberation ("behind the veil") of those who, someday, will flout the law. Why should we allow the possibility that a reasonable deliberator might err when in the "real world?" Three reasons, Dolovich argues. First, imperfect legal sanctions mean that sometimes innocents will be punished. Second, people are people, and people make mistakes. Third, the unequal distribution of resources means that certain worse-off members will be more prone to commit crimes simply due to circumstances. (It is important to recognize that even a just society in a Rawlsian sense is not perfectly equal.)

Dolovich spends pages analyzing some of the potential results of the behind-the-veil deliberations, and the principles of just punishment that would result.

1. There shall be no incarceration for non-serious offenses, unless doing so would appreciably deter the commission of serious offenses.
2. Punishments of incarceration, when imposed for serious offenses, may be only as severe as necessary to appreciably deter offenses causing harm of equal or greater severity (the parsimony principle).
3. Before any punishment may be imposed, its deterrent effect must be shown to be reasonably certain or imminent, on the basis of standards and modes of reasoning acceptable to all.
4. Consistent with these principles, the state must do all it can to reform the criminal justice system in order to reduce as much as possible the danger of convicting the innocent or retaining them in custody.

The parsimony principle is central to concerns of proportionality, and relies on both retributivism for its moral grounding and utilitarian considerations for its deliberative outcome; in other words, the original architects of a legitimate punitive system would know that crime deserves punishment, but would look to deterrence considerations for determining the proper proportion, because of the three qualifications on human conduct listed above. Ultimately, the needs of the law-abiding set the ceiling for punishment, as Dolovich argues:

If any punishment is to be legitimately imposed, those parties advocating its imposition must demonstrate convincingly, in terms that all could be expected to accept, that this imposition on the security and integrity of targets of punishment is immediately necessary or at least reasonably certain to result in greater protection for the law-abiding.

Though Dolovich doesn't list them specifically, hate crime enhancements, which often carry mandatory minimums, may run afoul of the parsimony principle.

If legislatures are to honor this principle, they must maintain the flexibility to rethink sentences in particular cases, or indeed to rethink the whole legislative approach to punishing certain offenses when the circumstances demand such reevaluation. Of particular concern in this regard are omnibus mandatory sentencing schemes which lump together a range of offenses and prescribe the same minimum sentence for each. Such schemes preclude the possibility for the focused consideration of the characteristics of each offense and the likely deterrent effect of the prescribed punishment which application of the principles demands.

Last, I should emphasize a few things. First, this summary of some of Dolovich's core arguments hardly begins to describe the complexities of her arguments, which is why I've linked to the original. Second, these arguments are Dolovich's, and not Rawls'. Finally, the advantage of a Rawlsian framework is its grounding in democratic principles. Theories such as utilitarianism and retributivism do not always clearly define the role of the state in providing punishment, especially in a state where laws are democratically created and changed. Whether hate crime enhancements meet Dolovitz's ideal is a matter for the affirmative--and negative--to consider.



*Sharp-eyed readers will note that, over at the other post, I originally thought that Rawls wouldn't "come near this resolution." I was partly right: not Rawls, but a Rawlsian, changed my mind.

ideas for the Aff, January-February LD topic (the actions of corporations...)

Like many trying to craft their Aff cases for this resolution, reader jay is stumped.

there are so many possibilities for the neg but i dont see any good ideas for aff. does anyone know of any?

The only way i see as of right now is to say that a corporation acts as an individual or in society's eyes, is an individual, but i dont see any other way

Also, just a thought, but i think it would be foolish to use any particular moral theory in your case because your opponent will attack that particular standard rather than your case...for either side, its better, probably, to just say that there is one without specifically naming it...

but yeah aff ideas?

He's come to the right place to get un-stumped. Maybe it's just me, but I think there are a lot of great ideas for the Aff to run with. Here's a quick rundown, as well as my answer to the "moral theory" question.

1. The legal presumption of "corporate personhood" is morally coherent as well. Corporations are rational beings (a la Kant) and/or intentional actors, unified in their being despite comprising diverse entities (see Peter A. French). Just like humans. Therefore, we should hold them to the same standards.

2. Since corporations act through and affect individuals, their actions ought to be held to the same standards as individuals. The different organizational context of the corporation does not warrant different standards.

3. Ethical consumerism. We hold corporations to moral standards by supporting them with our money, either through purchase or investment, or by not supporting them, by shopping elsewhere or by boycotts or other social pressure.

I'm sure readers can come up with other directions for the Aff to take.

Now, to the "moral theory" question. Should we promote a specific moral theory, or leave that undefined? As jay cautions, we may end up spending valuable time defending the standards instead of arguing on case.

This is one of the toughest calls with this resolution. If you don't adopt a moral framework (consequentialism via utility or something similar; ethical egoism; deontology via Kant or Rawls; virtue ethics; etc.) you risk opening yourself to whatever standards the Neg applies. You're probably already making moral arguments implicitly in your case; by selecting a moral theory as your criterion, you make those arguments explicit for the judge.

Secondly, if you don't adopt a moral framework, you'll have a tough time with any neg case running "morality is impossible because..." You'll have to spend the time arguing for morality anyway, so why not have your morality ready-made?

Third, the word "ought" presumes there's some sort of moral reason for holding them to the same standards. That reason is based on a moral theory. What is your theory?

I hope these quick thoughts are useful. Questions? Comments? Fervent disagreements? Let the discussion commence.